our finest hour

​Now England stood alone in her "finest hour". With an army half of whose arms and equipment had had to be left on the beaches of France she awaited invasion, and with a handful of fighter planes, Spitfires and Hurricanes, she challenged- and by the end of September had broken- the power of Germany's Luftwaffe. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." For the rest it was "blood, toil, tears and sweat" that Churchill offered. New forces and weapons had to be prepared, but in the meantime the Churchill spirit fired the country through his broadcasts, and the Commandos- an institution after his own heart- offered a foretaste of better things to the people of subjugated Europe.